Finding reliable solution to make RaspberryPi NAS

bnap00 · March 13, 2020

Hey community,

I have been using a RaspberryPi 4 with a 4TB Seagate external drive for my on-demand NAS (with openmediavault) since 2 months now. I sometimes forget to turn it off at nights or some time it stays on during the whole days and I am worried about the health of the external drive in the long run. I am now used to having this I cannot go back to not have it and I do not have a budget to buy a good NAS enclosure the one like Synology or others.

I am thinking of getting NAS drive from Seagate or WD and connect using it with raspberry pi hats, but most of the one I found was for 2.5" drives and not 3.5" drives, in which I find most of NAS drives.

I am looking for a raspberry pi hat that supports multiple 3.5" drives or an unmanaged drive bay that I can connect with my raspberry pi directly.

I am also trying to find a way if I can pool 2 USB 3.0 ports into a single interface to which I can connect multiple drives, but cannot find anything.

Any inputs are welcome.

Thanks in advanced.

mariushm · March 13, 2020

What I would encourage you to do is to look up some motherboards with cpu soldered to them which can run from a laptop adapter (which have DC In connector)

You can remove the mechanical drive from the external enclosure and connect it directly to a SATA connector of such a NAS drive, and this way you could also configure the software to automatically turn off the drive if it's not used for some period of time.

Here's a awesome example: https://www.ebay.com/itm/Intel-DN2800MT-1-86GHz-Intel-Atom-N2800-No-RAM-in-Thin-Case-Silent-PC-with-PSU/273966155871

Small case, powered from barrel jack DC In (says it's supplied with it, and it's most likely standard 12v or 19v laptop adapter), you can add two sata drives (use a sata -> 2xsata power adapter/extension cable to power the sata drives from motherboard).

You only need to add one or two ddr3 so-dimm sticks and you're good to go

The board even has a pci-e x1 slot, so you could use a pci-e x1 riser cable and plug a HBA card and get 8 more sata connectors, if you move the board to a bigger case.

You also have a miniPCIe slot, in which you could plug a wireless card.

You can take out your drives from the external cases and connect them directly to the sata ports, so you'd get higher speeds and better control over suspend drive features.

Something cheaper, here's a motherboard with an Atom CPU taken from an Asrock ION system : https://www.ebay.com/itm/AsRock-ION-330-AMCP7A-ION-Rev-1-06-Intel-Atom-CPU-Mini-ITX-Motherboard-with-BP/283354344075

It's 25$ plus shipping, so basically less than 50$ to your door if you're in US and it comes with two sata data+power cables. A 19v laptop adapter can be as cheap as 20$ and basically all you need is one or two SO-DIMM DDR2 sticks, a few dollars each.

You can install FreeNAS or whatever OS you want and connect two big mechanical drives on the 2 sata connectors and if you want, you can also add drives on the usb connectors.